Is Professional Food Writing Dead?

According to Amanda Hesser, former food writer and editor at the New York Times, food writing as a profession is dead: “It’s nearly impossible to make a living…and I think it’s only going to get worse.”

In a post published today called “Advice for Future Food Writers” (that reads more like an elegy for the industry), Hesser laid out the bleak truth for aspiring gastroscribes. Back in the day (a decade back), “food writers with staff jobs were able to earn $80,000 to $150,000 a year, and freelancers were regularly paid $2 a word,” she wrote, but now salaries (if you can even get one) are stuck at about half that, with little room for advancement.

She ends the post with some bulletpointed advice that boils down to “do other things in the food industry and maybe blog,” and mentions that “this new era is actually better,” since people who know what they’re talking about–chefs, farmers, etc.–are now the ones who tell people about food, but she doesn’t take the argument to its logical extreme.

Which would be, probably, that the very idea of there being well-paid professional “food writers” is an artifact of a different age. Photographers, sure. Editors, maybe. [Ed.'s Note: Maybe???] And having something like a team of professional chefs and a test kitchen around (like at our humble publication) does make for good reading that might be hard to come by on a blog. But the idea that a food writer could make $80-150,000 a year sounds, to a younger person who’s looked for a job in the past few years, as archaic and unlikely as working your way up from the mail room, or paying five cents for a loaf of bread.

So, anyone interested in getting into the food media business would be well-served by checking out her whole post. (Or by going into PR, perhaps. We kid!) Let us know if you see any holes in her argument (or have any original ideas for new ways to make money as a food writer).